I attend a fair number of #BlackLivesMatter and local justice events in Lansing. This morning I was at Action of Greater Lansing‘s Martin Luther King prayer breakfast held at Union Missionary Baptist Church. Lansing Police Chief Mike Yankowski was in attendance at the breakfast this morning. He didn’t have to be there, he was there […]
Interview with Tyler St. Clair on Planting a Church in Detroit, Fundraising as a Black Man & much more
Noah Filipiak interviews Pastor Tyler St. Clair about his upcoming church plant on the NW side of Detroit, the neighborhood Tyler and his wife both grew up in. Tyler’s target location is one of the “bad parts” of Detroit, with all of the symptoms of urban poverty ever-present. After being guided to plant in other […]
Finding Balance in Race Issues: Not Easy, but Necessary
We are naturally drawn to extremes when it comes to race issues; I am no exception. I wrote an article a few months back after University of Cincinnati (white) police officer Ray Tensing shot and killed unarmed (black) man Sam Dubose at point blank range. I was trying to make a point. I went to […]
Defending Whiteness: Violence of NJ teen used to justify violence of SC Deputy
A white deputy violently attacks a 16-year-old black girl who was being non-violently insubordinate in a South Carolina high school. (Which I wrote an article about yesterday). A teenage black boy in a New Jersey high school violently attacks his 62-year-old white teacher for taking away his cell phone, the video goes viral this week […]
Slowing Down Spring Valley: #BlackLivesMatter, Even Insubordinate Ones
My wife is a K-12 music teacher at a pubic school. Students are not allowed to have their cell phones or iPads out in class for personal use, every student knows that. If my wife tells a student to put their device away and they refuse, what is she to do? I think we’d all […]
What’s the Big Deal About Flying the Confederate Flag?
A white Christian friend of mine recently asked me to write a blog about the Confederate Flag controversy in South Carolina. As someone who has spent the vast majority of my life in northern states (Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan), I wasn’t sure what I had to offer to the conversation. Honestly, it seems obvious to me […]